So says IBM, which has conducted a study of "smart buildings" that included (somehow) an assessment of how much time workers spent "stuck in elevators."

Houston, in the past 12 months, you've spent a cumulative 9.7 years in elevators.

A quarter of all respondents to the national study said "the elevators in their office buildings are poorly coordinated - for example, too few or too many at any one time, or insufficient capacity," IBM said.

Houston's near-decade in elevators -- which is sorta impressive, in a bad way, when you consider how many people work in spread-out office campuses without high-rises -- is more than only four cities in the survery -- New York, LA, Chicago and Washington, D.C. (Another place without many high-rises, actually.)